Is Chariho’s Per Pupil Cost Really That High?

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA
February 17th 2023

RICHMOND – At the Feb. 7 meeting of the Chariho School Committee, newly-appointed Richmond member, Clay Johnson voted against adopting the Fiscal Year 2024 budget.

Johnson cited the cost per pupil as one of the most important factors to consider in evaluating the proposed budget.

“There’s been a lot of focus on percentage increase, and I think that’s the wrong way to look at budgets,” he said. “When we look at the Uniform Charter of Accounts, that’s a way to compare budgets across the state, and nowhere on there is a comparison with a percent increase. So, there’s two important factors for schools. One is the academic performance and second is efficiency in how we’re spending our money, and when we look at the best-performing school districts in the state, they’re performing efficiently, at a much lower rate per pupil.”

Johnson pointed to the Barrington and East Greenwich school districts as examples of high-performing districts with lower costs.

“That’s the key way to look at budgets and in the private sector, you look at benchmarking, and I would recommend benchmarking against the best in the state, and those are East Greenwich and Barrington right now, from an academic standpoint,” he said. “If we look at their per pupil rate and applied it to Chariho, we’d be spending six to eight million dollars less in this district. So, what I would recommend, as we start to look at our budget for next year is, we start to look at what those districts are doing, how they’re allocating for these budgets and setting limits and caps on these line items so we’re not just guessing where we’re going to end up on each line item, and padding each line item and having to go through the budget and pull the padding out to get where we want to go.”

The per-pupil numbers

A chart on the Rhode Island Department of Education’s website provides a complete list of all the public school districts in the state and each district’s cost per pupil.

The most recent document, released in 2021, confirms what Johnson stated; Barrington and East Greenwich do indeed have lower costs per pupil - $16,551 and $16,841 respectively. (They are not the lowest in the state. Cumberland’s cost is $14,998.)

Rhode Island’s four regional school districts are grouped together on the chart, and Chariho, which is considered a high-performing district, fared well, with the second-lowest cost per pupil, $19,083. Foster-Glocester was the lowest, $19,061, Bristol-Warren had the second-highest cost, $19,321, and the highest cost per pupil was the Exeter-West Greenwich Regional School District, at $21,042.

It should also be noted that Westerly’s cost per pupil is higher than Chariho’s, at $24,510.

“I think that there is this misconception that we are very expensive in all areas at Chariho and that’s just not the case,” School Committee Chair Catherine Giusti said. “Our teachers are not the highest paid in the state. We do not pay the highest sub [substitute teacher] rates in the state, and our per pupil cost is not the highest in the state at all. I think that people are quick to throw out information that will get the taxpayers’ backs up, and I think that there are people who are very skilled at giving only part of the picture, and I think that’s what we are seeing now, is people who are giving part of the answer and hoping to upset people. I can’t think of any other reason. We have members of the school committee who have been very clear that their goal is to level-fund this budget again. They feel that it is the only avenue that they have to show their displeasure with Chariho which is unfortunate, because I think consistently under-funding a consistently high-performing school district is not the way to get anything accomplished.”

Different demographics

The regional school districts comprise larger geographic areas and several schools. Three of the four regional districts have six schools apiece, and Chariho has eight schools.

Chariho Superintendent of Schools Gina Picard and Director of Finance and Administration Ned Draper pointed to disparities between the demographics of the Barrington and Chariho districts, which make it difficult to compare the two.

“He used Barrington as an example,” Picard said, referring to Johnson. “When you look at Barrington, the average median income in Barrington is what – about $125,000?”

The most recent Census data show the median household income in Barrington is even higher, $130,455.

Incomes in the three Chariho towns are lower. In 2022, Richmond’s median household income was $100,493, Charlestown’s was $86,023 and Hopkinton’s was $87,712.

Draper also noted that the North Kingstown School District was more comparable to Chariho in terms of the geographic area covered.

“They’ve got a lot of land mass, so Chariho and North Kingstown share some interesting similarities in that regard,” he said. “Same thing with Exeter-West Greenwich. In terms of size, we’re a little closer to NK, too.”

The budget that the School Committee adopted at the most recent meeting is $63.5 million, a 1.45% increase. The committee still has time, until March 14, to make changes to the spending plan.

Last year, voters in Richmond and Hopkinton rejected the proposed budget twice, and with only Charlestown residents approving it, the district was level-funded.

There are efforts currently underway to ensure that voters reject the budget again.

Johnson has launched a political action committee “Chariho Forgotten Taxpayers,” and is seeking members - and donors - to oppose the budget. The PAC was registered with the Rhode Island Board of Elections in January, around the same time the Town Council appointed him to the School Committee.

“We are looking for support now to prepare for a school budget fight in April,” the message on the PAC’s website states. 

In a recent letter to the editor, posted on the same website, Richmond Republican Louise Dinsmore blamed Chariho teacher contracts for “unsustainable” costs.

“Contrary to the rhetoric and propaganda pushed by the ‘Friends of Chariho’ in the community, I am not out to ‘destroy the schools’,” she wrote. “I realize that a strong community = strong schools.  That's why I moved here in the first place.  But we can't just sit by while the NEA [union] shark negotiators for the teachers force our community to pay bills that are unsustainable.” 

Picard said she remained hopeful that this year, the budget would be approved, but she admitted she was concerned.

“My hope is that we can continue to share the information that shows the parents and the taxpayers the investment that we’ve made in education, and that the cost of education in general has increased, just like everybody else’s household budget, but I think we do a good job of providing a high - quality program for our kids,” she said. “With that said, we recognize there’s a balance. Are we concerned that the budget will not pass? I think there’s always a concern.”